How Many Steps Should You Be Getting a Day? - From a Rehab Chiropractor
With the prevalence of smartwatches and health trackers, we’ve become obsessed with counting our daily steps. But how many steps a day should we be getting? We’ve been told that we should be getting 10,000 steps a day but is that accurate?
The answer is kind of…
Let’s look at what the research says.
This is an awesome graph that helps us easily understand the health benefits compared to the number of daily steps. As you can see, there is a dramatic decrease in all causes of mortality up to around 8,000 steps. But after that, the health benefits start to level off. You notice that after that 8,000 mark, we don’t get nearly the amount of health benefits from taking more steps.
This tells us that to get the most bang for your buck health benefit-wise, you should be trying to get around 8,000 steps a day. However, all of our goals should be to get more steps than we currently are. Just because we get fewer health returns after that 8,000 mark doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to take more steps. Every little bit counts!
If you aren’t getting 8,000 steps a day don’t stress out! Just try to do a little more than you’re currently doing. If you’re only taking 2,000 steps a day try to consistently get 3,000 steps. Once you consistently hit that point try to add another thousand. Remember every little bit helps, especially if you are under 8,000 steps per day. If you’re only getting 2,000 steps a day, adding an additional thousand steps could make a major impact on your health.
No matter where we fall on the chart, the goal for all of us should be to do a little more. Small changes like adding a few thousand steps to our day can make a major impact on our long-term health.
I hope you liked this blog and found it educational! If you have any questions or would like to work with me send me an email at resiliencechiro@gmail.com.
Talk soon,
Andrew
